


'til kingdom come

by secretfeanorian



Series: the worst things in life come free to us [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Music, Noldolante, Singing, featuring 'maglor is definitely an avenger'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretfeanorian/pseuds/secretfeanorian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logically speaking, it was impossible not to realize that the media would eventually notice the presence of another member in the team.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'til kingdom come

_I have written you down, now you will live forever.  
_

* * *

Logically speaking, Maglor knew straight from the start that it would only be a matter of time before people began to notice him, but that fact had just been another one of the things he didn’t think about much. Of course, it was obvious that he would eventually be noticed, since he was living with a group as open as the Avengers, but some reason he is still surprised when the public notices his presence during one more of the Avengers’ fights to save the world.  
  
Bucky has been an official Avenger for about two years now and Sam has been a member of the team for around half a year longer, so the internet latches onto the sighting and runs with it. The newspapers are dotted with headlines about a new Avenger and Maglor honestly hasn’t thought about it much.  
  
The majority of the group is in the kitchen watching the news and Steve twists around to look at Maglor from the couch. Maglor shrugs before the blond can ask the question. “I find I prefer privacy these days,” is his response, “but whatever you think should be done I’ll go with.”  
  
The Avengers call for a press conference, but Maglor doesn’t go with them. He watches it on TV from over the copied down songbook he’d retrieved from the ruins of Himring a few months previous.  
  
When the team gets back, he’s in the kitchen, humming half-forgotten tunes. Steve and Bucky go to their floor and Bruce and Tony disappear into the lab. Natasha and Clint are out somewhere doing something important and have been for the past almost-week, but Sam and Thor stay in the kitchen with Maglor.  
  
It remains quiet for a few minutes, but then Maglor breaks that silence by looking over at Thor and saying, “I wrote these.” Thor and Sam look at him and he smiles; half sincere, half bitter. “I was a poet,” he says calmly, “and I conjured with my words.”  
  
Sam’s face turns curious and he looks like he’s about to ask Maglor a question, but before he can, Maglor interrupts him with “I don’t know how yet…anymore,” he stops and stares down at the recopied text from the ancient book he’d owned once. _I don’t know how to_ , he almost repeats, but doesn’t because he’s afraid his voice will break.  
  
He stands and leaves the floor for his own silently. The tune on his lips that night breaks his heart and he recognizes it as the Noldolantë. He tries to push that lament down and away, but it won’t leave this time and thirteen days later, he quietly approaches Tony and asks for a plane to fly him to Oregon. Tony looks at him for a brief moment, and then grants his request without so much as a single jab. Maglor is grateful for that.  
  
Once in Oregon, he makes his way to a beach outside of a town called Bandon that he remembers vaguely from years ago. He waits until the sun has set and the tide has receded before climbing out on a strip of rock jutting out from behind a cave and sits for a few minutes listening to the sea crash against the shore.  
  
Even though he cannot feel the cold, he feels a shiver run down his spine and he pulls his jacket tighter around his torso. And then he sings. He has no harp to accompany him and for the first few verses, his voice is weak and it trembles. By the time Ithil has reached his peak, however, his voice is steady and strong, and the story swirls around Maglor.  
  
He sings through the night, moving only when the rising tide forces him to find a higher perch to avoid being submerged. When Vása peeks her head over the horizon, Maglor hesitates, but he doesn’t stop singing, even when he sees people moving toward the beach. Those people quietly watch him for a few hours, but when he reaches the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, his voice wavers and the tears finally begin to fall and the people slowly trickle away.  
  
He sings well into the next night, never moving from the higher perch he had moved to. As the sun rises on the third day, he reaches the end of the War of Wrath and by noon, he has fallen silent. His throat is raw and his voice is gone and for a moment he is confused because it used to be that he could sing for days and not be affected. Then he quietly chokes back a cry, because that is the key. It used to be. Things are different now.  
  
He doesn’t move until the sun is setting again and in the shadow the sunset casts over the ocean, he thinks he sees a figure. When the sun has set, Elrond is watching him from the deck of a ship. After a few minutes, his foster son turns away and the illusion fades away.  
  
Maglor goes back to New York after that. And he sings. Oh how he sings. Little by little, some of his power of old trickles back. Most of it is lost forever in the new and last Age, but enough remains that he almost feels young again.  
  
The first time he really uses the power again churning through his veins is when the last head of HYDRA has attempted to (and at that moment, succeeded in) recapturing the Winter Soldier. Maglor’s control snaps when he sees the terror in Bucky’s eyes when he realizes that he won’t be reached in time to prevent the agents from taking him away. Maglor slips into his core and then the agents restraining Bucky are sent flying and he’s not sure how it happened.  
  
There’s no restraining the media after that incident and when the theories about the new member actually being Loki start springing up, Maglor decides it’s time to stop hiding. He agrees to a press conference, one and only one, and quietly answers most of the questions thrown at him.  
  
It’s not until after the press conference has ended and the Avengers are filing out that someone thinks to stop him and ask him for his name. He only hesitates for a minute before telling them Macalaurë.  
  
Later on, he looks at the attempts reporters have made to spell his name and he laughs before quietly correcting them in the comments (if it’s an online article). Most don’t pay any attention to him and so the next time a reporter catches him, he spells it out for her with a small smile on his face.  
  
He finds he is uncomfortable around large groups of reporters and is soon reported to “more likely to stick around if there’s only two or three people asking him questions.”  
  
It takes a few months for anything ‘significant’ to come of his unveiling and when something does happen, Maglor almost misses it. The only reason he doesn’t is because Tony makes a sarcastic comment to Steve about how his patriotism is drawing in other symbols of America.  
  
Maglor looks around and sees a bald eagle watching him calmly from the balcony railing. He freezes. The eagle tilts its head at him and then flies away. Maglor isn’t sure what the feeling in his chest is, but it’s suddenly there and overwhelming and he quietly excuses himself from the conversation and leaves the room. Bucky watches him go, brow furrowed, then turns to look at where the eagle had been previously.  
  
Maglor comes down to breakfast the next morning and doesn’t mention the eagle, but Bucky catches him watching the balcony a few times, an indescribable emotion on his face. When he sees Bucky watching him, he shakes his head and looks pointedly away from the balcony. Bucky is in no way fooled, but he doesn’t say anything and Maglor is grateful for that.  
  
The next day, the eagle is back and she watches Maglor, but doesn’t do anything. He flies off when Tony comes around the corner, but she’s back again the next day, this time outside Maglor’s bedroom window. When he tells JARVIS to open the window, the eagle flies in, perches on the bed and watches Maglor.  
  
Maglor sighs and gets up. The eagle’s eyes follow him as he moves around the room. “What?” Maglor finally asks and the eagle softly caws and then flies up to Maglor’s shoulder and flaps her wings once before rubbing Maglor’s head.  
  
“You’re not going right now, are you?” says Maglor and the eagle’s response is to shake her head. Maglor feels strangely comforted. In the back of his mind, a voice says he should feel uneasy, not comforted, but screw what the voices say, he doesn’t feel uneasy and he won’t start feeling uneasy because his head is telling him to.  
  
Somewhere in his head, another voice is saying that that’s wrong, but he ignores that voice too. He’s getting better at ignoring the voices in his head, he thinks and twists his arm around to rub the eagle’s feathers. He doesn’t dwell on whether or not that’s a good thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Ithil is the moon, Vása is the sun and I’m not making stuff up. There is a town called Bandon in Oregon and there is a part of the beach that has a thing like that at low tide. It’s still exposed during high tide, but not by much.
> 
> Also, the whole magic singing sort of thing, I’m not really sure how it works, so I just stuck vague (ish) hints and mentions of it and tried not to go into too much detail because those are unfamiliar waters.


End file.
